In the long ago days of early 2020, Tide Lines had one goal with their second album Eye of the Storm: to translate the band’s word-of-mouth success into something verifiable. Into something tangible that would honour their fanbase and reflect their audience’s passion. Into, in short, a decent showing in the Top 40. Charting a self-produced, self-released album was a big ask. Then again, the Glasgow-based four-piece had already had serious form at self-starting a phenomenon. Through rigorous songwriting and vigorous gigging, Robert Robertson (vocals, guitar), Alasdair Turner (guitar, pipes), Ross Wilson (keyboards) and Fergus Munro (drums) had built up an intense following at home, and beyond. Developing the folk-rock roots they’d planted with 2016 debut single Far Side of the World ( 7.5 million combined streams and counting) and 2017 album Dreams We Never Lost, Tide Lines were already pushing out from the Scottish heartland. And for their next trick... Having finally been able to tour their Top 12 album last summer and autumn, albeit, in truncated, between-variants form, Tide Lines went home. They poured the stored-up energy and momentum of their success into, firstly, buying the Baptist church on the island of Mull that they’d previously rented. Now it was their dedicated rehearsal and recording space. Then, secondly, they began making their third album. Emboldened by the against-the-odds success of Eye of the Storm, Robertson focused all his energy, ambition, vision, and excitement. Rather than that Covid-compromised momentum being wasted, he metabolised it into his songwriting. The result is An Ocean Full of Islands, a 12-track album written and recorded after the walls had closed in but that is defiantly, gloriously uplifting. First single Rivers in The Light is big, bold, and confident, Robertson's bell-clear voice at its most stirring and the sound of Tide Lines grasping the thistle of what they, at heart, are: a rock band in touch with the geography and the culture that formed them. Having put in his 10,000 hours in boozy bar-room hootenannies, from playing the accordion as a pre-teen in his Highlands hometown to multiple indie gigs in Glasgow, multi-instrumentalist Robertson knows of what he speaks. As he puts it of Rivers in the Light: “The melody is constantly rising to a peak middle of the chorus, which works with a big arrangement.” In other words, Tide Lines know how to move a room. Recording in their sacred space on Mull across late winter and spring 2022, Tide Lines used the island’s remoteness and solitude to, paradoxically, make an album for the world.
Tide Lines, get ready. Everyone’s about to join in.